Discussions of the language issue are found in the classic works Elizabeth Sherman Swing, Bilingualism and Linguistic Segregation in the Schools of Brussels (1980); Els Witte and Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, The Interdisciplinary Study of Urban Bilingualism in Brussels (1987); and Alexander B. Murphy, The Regional Dynamics of Language Differentiation in Belgium (1988). Later works on this issue include Jeanine Treffers-Daller, Mixing Two Languages: French-Dutch Contact in Comparative Perspective (1994); Fred Guldentops, Pascale Mistiaen, and Christian Kesteloot, The Spatial Dimensions of Urban Social Exclusion and Integration: The Case of Brussels, Belgium (2001); and Christian Dessouroux, Espaces partagés, espaces disputés: Bruxelles, une capitale et ses habitants (2008).

Among the literature—mostly of a critical nature—on the impact of European integration on the city and region of Brussels are Alex G. Papadopoulos, Urban Regimes and Strategies: Building Europe’s Central Executive District in Brussels (1996), which studies Brussels’s EC and EU installations; Carola Hein, The Capital of Europe: Architecture and Urban Planning for the European Union (2004), and European Brussels: Whose Capital? Whose City? (2006); Marie-Françoise Plissart and Gilbert Fastenaekens, Change: Brussels, Capital of Europe (2006); and Roel de Groof (ed.), Brussels and Europe (2009).

History

Historical surveys include Paul de Ridder, Brussels: History of a Brabantine City, trans. from Dutch (1990); Arlette Smolar-Meynart and Jean Stengers (eds.), La Région de Bruxelles: des villages d’autrefois à la ville d’aujourd’hui (1989), a look at the transformation of Brussels from a collection of villages to an urban agglomeration; and Georges-Henri Dumont, Histoire de Bruxelles: biographie d’une capitale, new ed. (2005), an outstanding historical study. Janet L. Polasky, Revolution in Brussels, 1787–1793 (1987), studies in detail the period of the French Revolution and its influence on the city. Catherine Labio, Belgian Memories (2002), contains an essay on the remaking of Brussels’s landscape.

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